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Capability profiles are used to advertise the available characteristics of a storage pool as part of SPBM. These capabilities include tiering policies, FAST Cache, drive type, RAID level, and space efficiency which are exposed in vSphere as a service level (Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum). The service level for a given capability profile is automatically calculated based on the previously mentioned capabilities of the underlying storage pool. In addition to the service level, storage administrators can create custom usage tags which are also exposed in vSphere. This allows for an additional level of detail when differentiating between capability profiles. When creating a storage pool, there is an option to also create a capability profile for that pool, as shown in Figure 7.
Note: Dell UnityVSA, certain capabilities such as FAST Cache and RAID Type are not available, so they are omitted from the list below.
Capability profiles include the following capabilities:
Usage tags: These are user-defined tags that storage administrators create to designate what the capability profile is used for. Because these tags are also propagated to vSphere, they can be used as a communication mechanism between the storage and VMware administrators. For example, if the capability profile is tagged with Database, the VMware administrator can place database VMs on this capability profile.
Service level: This is a level such as Platinum, Gold, Silver, or Bronze that is calculated based on the tier and RAID types that comprise the pool. Due to the virtualized nature of the Dell UnityVSA solution, the RAID level is not included in the service level calculation. Table 1 and Table 2 provide information about how service levels are calculated for the different platforms.
Type | Platinum | Gold | Silver | Bronze |
Single-tier pool | Extreme performance | Performance (RAID10) | Performance (RAID5 or RAID6) | Capacity |
Two-tier pool |
| Extreme performance Performance | Performance Capacity | Extreme performance Capacity |
Three-tier pool |
| Extreme performance Performance Capacity |
|
|
Type | Gold | Silver | Bronze |
Single-tier pool | Extreme performance | Performance | Capacity |
Two-tier pool | Extreme performance Performance | Performance Capacity | Extreme performance Capacity |
Three-tier pool |
| Extreme performance Performance Capacity |
|
Storage properties: The detailed storage properties are listed below. When creating a VM storage policy, use either usage tags or a service level.
If the capability profile was not created during pool creation, it can also be created on an existing pool in the Capability Profiles tab of the VMware page. Create one capability profile for each storage pool that is used for vVols. This page displays all the existing capability profiles and their associated pools, as shown in Figure 8. You can also click the Edit button to see and update the details of the capability profile.